Dec 18, 2020 02:01 AM
Employers Can Require Workers to Get Covid-19 Vaccine, U.S. Says (boss style)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/us/ee...ndate.html
INTRO: Employers can require workers to get a Covid-19 vaccine and bar them from the workplace if they refuse, the federal government said in guidelines issued this week. Public health experts see employers as playing an important role in vaccinating enough people to reach herd immunity and get a handle on a pandemic that has killed more than 300,000 Americans. Widespread coronavirus vaccinations would keep people from dying, restart the economy and usher a return to some form of normalcy, experts say... (MORE)
Trump's peace deals mean anti-Israel boycott movement is dead (hip trends)
https://www.syriahr.com/en/196404/
EXCERPTS: A decade ago, if you asked pro-Israel thinkers and activists to name the biggest threats to the Jewish state, a nuclear Iran would no doubt top the list — but BDS and delegitimization more generally would come a close second.
[...] Israel’s fear — and the BDSers’ goal — was that the Jewish state would become ... an internationally loathed and widely sanctioned pariah. ... The BDSers achieved a measure of success, in Europe especially. Performing artists would often cancel concerts in Israel under BDS pressure — and sometimes lead the charge, as in the case of the likes of Tilda Swinton, Roger Waters and Coldplay’s Chris Martin.
European theaters would refuse to host Jewish (not even Israeli) film festivals, even as BDSers preposterously insisted that their movement isn’t anti-Semitic. Western universities or individual departments would mount academic boycotts of Israel. Then, last year, in perhaps the most alarming move, the European Court of Justice ruled that EU states must label West Bank products as “made in settlements.”
[...] Well, so much for all that. Today, a little more than a year since the EU labeling decision, you can find Israeli products — prominently displayed, sometimes with Israeli flags to promote them — on the shelves of grocery stores in the United Arab Emirates.
[...] To be clear, I’m not suggesting BDS will disappear tomorrow. The wider Arab world is making peace with Israel, but Palestinian leaders aren’t about to give up what is admittedly a very nice grift: billions of dollars in international aid in exchange for refusing to accept reality. BDS helps lend a veneer of global credibility to their rejectionism. And fanatic college professors and students can always use “anti-Zionism” to mask old-fashioned hatred, singling out one state and one state only — the one that happens to be Jewish — for opprobrium.
But the fact remains that the Abraham Accords have revealed a silly side to the BDS movement: For God’s sake, when Sudan, once one of the world’s most virulently anti-Israel states, has made its peace with Jerusalem, BDS looks like a boutique cause for gentry leftists, the kind who put their pronouns in their Twitter bios. The real world — and the Middle East — have just moved on... (MORE - details)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/us/ee...ndate.html
INTRO: Employers can require workers to get a Covid-19 vaccine and bar them from the workplace if they refuse, the federal government said in guidelines issued this week. Public health experts see employers as playing an important role in vaccinating enough people to reach herd immunity and get a handle on a pandemic that has killed more than 300,000 Americans. Widespread coronavirus vaccinations would keep people from dying, restart the economy and usher a return to some form of normalcy, experts say... (MORE)
Trump's peace deals mean anti-Israel boycott movement is dead (hip trends)
https://www.syriahr.com/en/196404/
EXCERPTS: A decade ago, if you asked pro-Israel thinkers and activists to name the biggest threats to the Jewish state, a nuclear Iran would no doubt top the list — but BDS and delegitimization more generally would come a close second.
[...] Israel’s fear — and the BDSers’ goal — was that the Jewish state would become ... an internationally loathed and widely sanctioned pariah. ... The BDSers achieved a measure of success, in Europe especially. Performing artists would often cancel concerts in Israel under BDS pressure — and sometimes lead the charge, as in the case of the likes of Tilda Swinton, Roger Waters and Coldplay’s Chris Martin.
European theaters would refuse to host Jewish (not even Israeli) film festivals, even as BDSers preposterously insisted that their movement isn’t anti-Semitic. Western universities or individual departments would mount academic boycotts of Israel. Then, last year, in perhaps the most alarming move, the European Court of Justice ruled that EU states must label West Bank products as “made in settlements.”
[...] Well, so much for all that. Today, a little more than a year since the EU labeling decision, you can find Israeli products — prominently displayed, sometimes with Israeli flags to promote them — on the shelves of grocery stores in the United Arab Emirates.
[...] To be clear, I’m not suggesting BDS will disappear tomorrow. The wider Arab world is making peace with Israel, but Palestinian leaders aren’t about to give up what is admittedly a very nice grift: billions of dollars in international aid in exchange for refusing to accept reality. BDS helps lend a veneer of global credibility to their rejectionism. And fanatic college professors and students can always use “anti-Zionism” to mask old-fashioned hatred, singling out one state and one state only — the one that happens to be Jewish — for opprobrium.
But the fact remains that the Abraham Accords have revealed a silly side to the BDS movement: For God’s sake, when Sudan, once one of the world’s most virulently anti-Israel states, has made its peace with Jerusalem, BDS looks like a boutique cause for gentry leftists, the kind who put their pronouns in their Twitter bios. The real world — and the Middle East — have just moved on... (MORE - details)